


in the silence of the night; through all the tears and all the lies

by AlejandroAsher



Category: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Genre: Fantasizing, Heartache, Lovesickness, M/M, Masturbation, Memories, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Past Tense, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, Underage Masturbation, Underage Smoking, Yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:47:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26528458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlejandroAsher/pseuds/AlejandroAsher
Summary: Inspired bythis song.Suffice it to say, Dante left out some important details in his letters about his time in Chicago to Ari.
Relationships: Aristotle Mendoza/Dante Quintana
Comments: 11
Kudos: 59





	in the silence of the night; through all the tears and all the lies

**Author's Note:**

> This is a spur-of-the-moment thing I just spat out because I wanted to write something new again. The tags included plenty of warnings; you know what you're getting yourself into. Inspired by _So Happy I Could Die_ by Lady Gaga. It's also not really edited at all, though I did read it once more before posting. This is about 2.5k words, so enjoy. :)

**Dante Quintana**

There's a story that they told me, one that I'd heard while I held a beer bottle in my hand for the first time. The cap was off, and the bottle was no longer full. I wasn't holding it for my dad, or helping my mom get the groceries into the refrigerator, or throwing it away. It was for me; all mine to drink. To down. My first beer. The first of many, not just that night, but throughout my life. Not to mention the pot. The joint I was offered. I was experimenting with mood-altering substances, a feat that my mother would—and almost did—hang me for. 

It was easy for me to talk to people. I liked people. The world was so vast, so diverse. So many kinds of beautiful souls, distinct personalities and names and skin tones and accents and languages. But mostly, I ended up hanging with the goths at that party. They were pretty cool. They were angsty in a way I hadn't ever really noticed before. In a way that had always been stigmatized, maybe. I didn't think their parents raised them to be nice, like my parents and Ari's parents. Or perhaps their parents did, but they disregarded the lessons they were taught. They became the people they had been taught to avoid. Warning them about the dangers of the outside world was futile, not only because it would have been preaching to the choir, but because they  _ were _ the bad kids they were being warned about.

I don't remember their names. More likely than not, I was too inebriated for their names to stick in my mind. Besides, I hadn't kept in contact with them after I left Chicago. Ari was living in my mind rent-free, twenty-four hours a day, the memory of his being seemingly nocturnal. There was no space in my mind for the goth kids anymore. I'd stare up at the ceiling of my temporary Chicago bedroom, thinking about El Paso and the pool and Ari. 

The only source of light would be the moonlight just barely entering the room, for the curtains would always do a good job of covering up the window. Of creating a mystery between the inside of my room and the outside world. No one could look in to see what's happening, and I couldn't see anything, either. The only way for me to see the outside would have been to pull the curtains back, but that would mean exposing my room. All or nothing.

I chose nothing.

At least, during those moonlight hours, I chose nothing. The curtains would be tightly closed, the door to my bedroom closed. If one of my parents were to come into the hallway, they wouldn't see me unless they entered my room, so maybe there was no point in closing my door, but I still did it. Closed my door. Extra insurance.

This separation of my room and the world, the division between the inside of my heart and the outside of it, would exist due to the story the goth types told me.

"Did you hear about what happened to [him]?" one of the girls said to us as we downed our beers, the alcohol coursing through our systems, slowly picking away at our psyches.

"[Him]? What happened to [him]?" one of the boys said.

"They said he liked to kiss other boys. They saw him kissing someone, someone with short hair and a hoodie and Converse shoes. They beat them up, gave them hell. Wouldn't stop harassing them at the school he goes to."

"Damn, seriously?" the boy asked, taking another sip of beer. I wondered how he did it so effortlessly, how he could let the beer just hit his tongue and not even flinch. I didn't even know what I thought about beer yet. I liked the way it made me feel, but the taste could've been a little less harsh.

"Yeah. They beat the shit out of him, just 'cause he liked guys." She took a sip too. So effortlessly. "Fucked up shit."

It took a lot less effort for me to chug the beer after that. It was all about how it made me feel, how it made me the ballsiest bitch on the dance floor. It made me forget. Forget about what was real, about how horrified I was to continue thinking about boys like this, if I would end up like [him]. I fit in, right among the goths. And the jocks, and the popular kids, and every other clique under the sun. With everyone. I could be a part of everyone's world, if only I drank and forgot about boys.

If only I forgot about the angel with a philosopher's name who was waiting for me in El Paso.

After taking an incredibly cold shower and passing out the instant my head hit the pillow, I vowed to never do that again. To never inebriate so damn much again, with the intent of forgetting about my Ari. Never again.

Liking boys meant you would get beat up. For girls, it was normal. Desired. Expected. Girls could giggle when an attractive, shirtless boy would walk past them and wink at them, but if you were a boy, you could never expect a boy to walk by you and wink at you, especially not a hot and shirtless one. Boys were assumed to like girls. It seemed that even boys assumed themselves to be so straight, like their parents and classmates wouldn't even let them consider another possibility.

And yet, even in the face of all the dangers liking boys comes with, it was just impossible. There was no way to stop it, no way I could even begin to fathom simply  _ not _ doing a double take, or not letting my vision linger for just a beat too long, or not letting my imagination go just a bit wild when a boy who looks a little too much like Ari smiles and shows his brilliantly white teeth.

These are all things that only happened with other boys. Ari Mendoza was in a class all by himself.

Boys existed. And boys were pretty. But Ari seemed to obliterate all the other boys when it came to beauty. If Miss Universe was a pageant for men and not women, Ari could walk onto the stage and be crowned on the spot. All the other contestants would faint and die. I know I would.

I might've been able to fleetingly look at a random pretty boy in El Paso or Chicago and be able to forget about him within the minute, but Ari never left my mind, not once. Not once except the night I drank to forget.

This is why the separation of the inside and outside is important. There's a clear difference, a border that only I could cross. Past midnight, when the curtains were closed and the door was locked, the moonlight barely entering the room and struggling to illuminate the area, this was the only moment I could truly be myself. The only moment that, for the longest time, I wouldn't tell anyone about. Not until I wrote Ari that letter, that  _ handwritten _ letter about masturbation that I couldn't deny writing. I wrote it, wrote my name on it, put it in an envelope, and sent it. With my address and his address on the envelope, I sent it.

What the hell was wrong with me? Why the hell would I have done that?

I had never found it difficult to say awkward things out loud. They were just things. Objective facts, things about the world that just are true and nothing more. But this was different. Liking boys, masturbating, the fear of not being  _ normal _ —these were all things that just didn't come out of my mouth as easily, even though they were just as true as anything else. 

So instead of speaking them aloud, instead of going to my father or writing Ari a letter any sooner, or even going to the library to see what I might find about boys liking boys, I spoke to  _ myself  _ past midnight, if you could even call it that. I touched myself. I thought about Aristotle Mendoza, and I touched myself.

My skin would turn a deep pink color and my body would become hot, maybe because I was trying to simulate the warmth that being in bed with Ari would theoretically bring. My mind would become filled with all sorts of fantasies, scenarios that seemed impossible to me at the time, situations that would somehow end up with Ari naked and above me, his hand gripping my throat, grinding against me.

And when all was said and done, I'd turn beet red, hurriedly cleaning up with the toilet paper roll on my nightstand and pulling up my pajamas and pretending like I totally hadn't just gotten off to the concept of my best friend—my _ male _ best friend—dominating me. Whispering so many filthy things into my ear, smacking me across the face to get me to shut the hell up so we wouldn't get caught in our scandalous affairs. I had no idea where I got the fantasies from. They just appeared in my mind, and couldn't be helped. They were like desires, dreams begging to be realized.

Ari had no clue I was thinking about him like this. I don't think he was capable of realizing that anyone  _ could _ think about him like that. And I was willing to bet I was far from the first person who had done so. There were probably countless girls who giggled at him and blushed and flipped their hair whenever he walked past them—not that he would've noticed. Ari fails to notice the millions of eyes that land on him on the rare occasion he walks into a room full of people. He has this astounding, captivating energy. It's irreproducible and irreducible, and you can't ever get enough.

I wondered how Ari would feel if he ever found out the things I thought about him. I thought he might be confused, or angry. I have no idea what he thought about the masturbation letter because he never gave me a response. Then again, he never responded to a lot of my letters, that bastard.

There were too many risks, too many what-ifs that I ended up keeping all this to myself. I maintained the separation between the inside and the outside, and it was okay, for a while. I was safe in my little bubble where I could think about Ari and masturbate about Ari and be sad about Ari and dream about Ari.

There was one particular night, one occasion that sticks around in my mind like gum on the underside of a classroom seat. One particular scenario, image in my mind that I hadn't been able to get out. About Ari and me.

In some alternate universe, in another timeline on Earth where we could've been together, I imagined one night we could spend together. I think it was in my room, way past midnight. My parents were out of the house for whatever reason. The details of the circumstances leading up to the moment itself are fuzzy. The only thing that's clear is Ari.

Climbing into bed with me, I pictured him placing his hand on my jawline and kissing me softly as we savor the tastes of each other's lips. Then his hands would find their way to my thighs, and he'd pick me up from the bed and push me against a wall, pressing his lips to mine again in a heated and sexy way; a manner so much more feverish than the first one. I wanted to grab the hem of his shirt and pull the article up over his head, letting the item drop to the floor because it's unnecessary at best and a nuisance at worst. And I wanted my fingers to fly to his belt buckle, and to fumble with them as the tightness in my own pants becomes even more excruciating and unbearable.

The thought of Ari taking my clothes off, or even taking his own clothes off, is more than enough to make my knees go a little weak and to make my face flush pink with desire. It wouldn't take long for both of us to be completely naked, and it wouldn't take long for us to be back in my bed again, messily kissing each other everywhere, on our foreheads and cheeks to jawlines to necks to chests to stomachs. I wanted so badly to trace every inch of his body with my lips, to memorize every muscle of his body through  _ touch. _ I was so motherfucking touch-deprived. I wanted his skin on mine, his hands all over my body, my hands all over his. I wanted his fingernails to rake through my scalp and down my back.

I wanted all of him.

And he would fuck me, sliding and pounding into me, eliciting sounds from me that would have been nothing short of embarrassing, shameful, and maybe downright pornographic—but I wouldn't care. Because he's  _ Ari. _ And Ari’s the only person in the world I could ever do this with, the only boy I would ever want to show this part of myself to. And I imagined how it would feel to have him finish inside of me, for him to stop moving inside of me and finish, releasing his seed with a moan and a shaky sigh and even more kisses on my lips, only to pull out and leave me a mess, refusing to cover me up with a blanket. The only warmth I would get that night would emanate from Ari's body as he cuddles and spoons me, and it'd be more than enough.

But then reality would set in whenever I would finish, and I would go from hot and bothered to just bothered in about two seconds. Ari would never do these things to me. He would never want to take my clothes off and kiss the insides of my thighs and fuck me and kiss me. His mind didn't work that way. He didn't like boys.

What a tragedy, that the world's most beautiful boy didn't like boys.

Sometimes I would remember this information with a loud sigh or a grunt. But most times it would make me cry. It would drive me to tears, tears filled with and dripping of the shame and embarrassment that came with having such vivid, detailed, and dirty fantasies about my best friend, but also tears of despair and longing, filled with stupid hope that  _ maybe, just maybe _ there exists a reality where Ari likes boys. Where he likes me.

Many nights, in that Chicago bedroom, I cried myself to sleep, separated from the outside, wishing the most beautiful boy in the world could have eyes for me. Because with my countless attempts to do so notwithstanding, it seemed that there was no way I was ever going to stop having eyes for him.


End file.
